Donnerstag, 16. Juni 2016

Samstag, 30. August 2014

- To drink only when it's night. (said of the Pythagoreans by Jamblichos: Vita Pythagorae)- To always be able to still find your way home unaided [for soldiers: even in the dark]. (Xenophon: The State of the Lacedaimonians. Some say that the Spartans didn't drink at all, some cite famous Spartan drunkards, some say they each had their own cup to that they held on and didn't let it go around, some say their convivia were so dull that they had to call on the services of Athenian MCs to liven them up, some say-Plutarch I believe- that the Spartans drank water out of red-coloured kothon-cups that gave them the illusion of drinking wine, he maybe also says that they made some of their Helots drunk to show their children how ridiculous one behaves when inebriated; some
say he's doing the
obituary mambo, and some
say he's hanging on the wall- perhaps
this yarn's the only thing that holds
this man together, some say he was never here at all.)-Plato: Nomoi (Laws): "No one should be allowed to
taste wine until they are eighteen; from eighteen to thirty they may take a
little; but when they have reached forty years, they may be initiated into the
mystery of drinking. Thus they will become softer and more impressible; and
when a man's heart is warm within him, he will be more ready to charm himself
and others with song." He advises that from the age of 40 a man should indulge himself periodically in order to feel and become young again. As Goethe wrote in his West-Eastern Divan: "Youth is drunkenness without wine."

Freitag, 13. Dezember 2013

Lycourinos: Occult Traditions.Ginzburg: Ecstasies.Levenda: Stairway to Heaven and The Dark Lord.Bogdan/Starr (eds.): AC and Western Esotericism.Stratton-Kent: Conjure Codex I and II and his Encyclopaedia Goetica. (I plan to read more of this in the near future. I've perused his work on the Grimorium Verum early in the year and seem to share with him the rather dynamic, communicative-reciprocative approach to those 'entities' à la shamanism and Tantra.) On top are some of my
personal notes.

Mittwoch, 23. Oktober 2013

Dienstag, 8. Oktober 2013

Out of pure ennui, a rich
English noblewoman had the whim to do something for the poor. So she gave a
great sum to her administrators to use for charity. Once, she travelled the
continent for a few months, and upon her return found out that instead of the
familiar grimy hovels of her beneficiaries, there now was a construction site
where they built houses a school and a hospital. “Mon Dieu! What have they done
to my beautiful, quaint slum!”, she exclaimed.

Montag, 9. September 2013

Sonntag, 8. September 2013

On a freight ship, a veritable floating coffin, from odorous HK to haughty Shanghai: two friends and I had been drinking the previous night with two Russian sailors. As it usually happens on such occasions at least one out of three will be utterly destroyed. That time it was our comrade Kurt's turn. In the morning when we prepared to go up for breakfast he just couldn't be roused.
The petit dejeuner was truly abominable and seeing the whitish-grey porridge and the thin, watery coffee, my other compatriot, John Wanker, had the idea of mixing those two ingredients up, taking them to Kurti's bunk and pouring that concoction into his underpants that he was still wearing.

Donnerstag, 29. August 2013

Dienstag, 27. August 2013

In our town there is a large bridge over the river Danube. The other night we had to cross it to get from one bar to another. Some of us were in a car and two on a motorbike...
Some days later, the owner of the car got a speeding ticket with a notice to report to the police, so he went to the station to make further inquiries.
When he asked why the fee was so unusually high, the officer on duty simply said: 'Come with me, Sir.' Thereupon latter showed him a picture: on it was a guy from our group leaning his upper body out of the car backdoor-window in the process of passing a beer-bottle to a guy we call Sexmachine (cause he looks a bit like a certain character from a movie) who was driving the bike greedily anticipating the generous offer with an outstretched arm.

Freitag, 16. August 2013

I grew up
in a small village at the fringe of the city of Vienna; when I was little, I came to believe
that many older people were ‘bad’ cause of the way they looked at me. It was
only much later that I heard that most of them had actually worked for my great
grandfather and were consequently only looking at me in a strange condescending
fashion so to gloat over the decline and downfall of my family’s fortune. My
grandmother told me that, true, the Russians after the War had blundered lots
of our stuff but that, were one to look into the homes and houses of that
village, one would find at least as much of our furniture there as the
occupation army had taken for spoils.

Montag, 3. September 2012

The taxonomy of mudras and godforms (postures) within this work is not only very revealing from a cultural-historical viewpoint but also applicable to the mystic: merely try to focus some 'qi' or mental or emotional energies in any given situation of your life through these channels and see what they will effect for yourself! It is great fun indeed. There is also an equally recommendable corresponding work on Buddhist iconography to be found here.

Donnerstag, 9. August 2012

Montag, 6. August 2012

The crazy discipline of art-history is a multi-refractive sort of humanistic speculation on the highest cognitive and aesthetic level; it is also quite useless like poetry culture and life so naturally I am infatuated with it. Here are some interesting books and worthy authors for your most esteemed consideration: